Sunday, March 19, 2006

I have recently passed a milestone and am approaching another. My Creative Zen MP3 player contains 402 albums and 4897 tracks. It would take two and a half weeks to listen to everything on there back to back but I’m not going to try that as I like to sleep and go to the lavatory occasionally. I would suggest that my player remains the favourite object I own by some considerable distance – closely followed by my Pure digital radio methinks. When I took the girls to their swimming lesson this morning I sat poolside and indulged in a sort of Desert Island Discs style activity which proved enormously stimulating. You can search for albums really quickly on the machine but, if you wish, you can scroll all the way through the albums from start (‘#1 Record/Radio City’ by Big Star) to finish (‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ by David Bowie). At any one time, as you scroll, only six album titles are visible on the screen at once so I wondered which ‘screen of six’ I would take to a desert island or Stroud or Dax or wherever if those bare half dozen recordings were all I was allowed. The three contenders are listed below. The third option is a bit tongue-in-cheek but The Fall’s Peel Sessions are marvellous while the first two on that list are bona fide classics. I would say that Option One wins the day as it covers quite a few bases and covers them rather magnificently: a classic folk album, a classic jazz recording, some peerless seventies reggae, a subtle and delicate soundtrack, a post-punk loud and scary thing and Radiohead’s finest and most challenging hour. Option Two is tempting, mind. After a week or two on the island (or living in Stroud or Dax) I’d probably be crying out for OneHundred Years by The Cure or Horsechimes by Prefab Sprout.

Option OneJust Another Diamond Day by Vashti BunyanKes Original Soundtrack by John CameronKid A by RadioheadKilling Joke by Killing JokeKind of Blue by Miles DavisKing Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown by Augustus Pablo

Option TwoPornography by The CurePost by BjorkPower, Corruption and Lies by New OrderPretzel Logic by Steely DanProtest Songs by Prefab SproutRabbit Songs by Hem